Saturday, July 17, 2010

Jack 'O Lanterns in July

This is our first year with a garden. I have to admit we got a bit carried away. It is huge, but well producing. Of course we wanted to grow everything just to see if we could. And basically, that was pretty much what we did. Most things did well, some did not. But we've been more than pleased with the results of our first efforts. As I've mentioned oh, about 100 times, it's HOT here right now. We've consistently been over 112 degrees for weeks now and though some of our plants have suffered (our tomatoes are more like stewed on the vine tomatoes) we're still raking in a pretty good harvest.

As I said, we just planted things to see if they would grow. We involved my daughter by allowing her to pick out some seeds and she was eager to get watermelons and pumpkins in the ground. Despite the heat the watermelons have taken over a good quarter of the garden space and I'm growing watermelons as fast as I can give them away. And pumpkins. We have SO MANY PUMPKINS. I should have thought this one through a little better. Pumpkins in July? Who wants pumpkins in July? They're more of a harvest time thing, right? They're not huge thank goodness. The heat seems to have stunted them but I have several good sized orange globes littering my yard.

With excessive heat comes excessively cooped up children. This week especially, it's been too hot even to swim so Momma has had to be extra creative with the indoor entertainment. We cut a couple of our prolific pumpkins from the vine and spent the afternoon carving summer jack o' lanterns. The kids loved squishing pumpkin guts in their hands and crying out "ewwwww" before bursting into fits of giggles. We had a little shape review when they picked out the shapes for their pumpkin's features and got to stab their squash with toothpicks. How much fun is that?

My daughter had the honor of naming our summer pumpkins, calling one "Pointy Burt" and the other "Orange Head." Here she is with "Pointy Burt."

The only place dark enough in the house to light our summer pumpkins was the laundry room so we moved the laundry basket (I really should fold those) put them on the washer, shut the door and watched them glow. I've never had so much fun in my laundry room!

3 comments:

Delightful!! What a creative, open-thinking mom you are. I love your daughter's cheeky wink-face (and Pointy Bert is the best name ever!). Make sure to bake and freeze LOTS...I do mine in 1 cup bags, to use in soup and muffins all winter long! July IS a funny time for pumpkins, though!